[quote] & <blockquote> aren't parsing a URL in a citation as per BBCode & HTML

I’m a newbie so apologies in advance if this isn’t the correct location to flag this. I searched Google, discourse.org, & commonmark.org but haven’t found anything yet.

Citing a URL in addition to just a name or article title means readers can easily check your source & read further if they choose (I assume it’s also better for SEO).

On phpBB forums, the following BBCode will put a link into the citation:

[quote="In [url=http://example.com/]First Post[/url], Bob"]

On WordPress, the following HTML effectively does the same thing:

<blockquote><cite><a href="http://example.com">First Post</a>, Bob</cite>
Hello this is my quote.
</blockquote>

The screenshot below shows examples of how they render on my forum & blog:

But here’s how they render on Discourse:

[quote=“In First Post, Bob”]

First Post, Bob Hello this is my quote.
[quote="TEU, post:1, topic:82572"]
On phpBB forums
[/quote]

This is how you would do it on Discourse.

We support some BBCode but by no means attempt to support all of it.

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Thanks Sam for the prompt response! Great to know there’s a way to link to other posts on the same forum but is there a way to link to external URLs?

For more academic forums, being able to easily cite with a URL is really important.

I’ve also asked on commonmark.org too, although they don’t seem to support any citation, which is very puzzling.

Sure, we have oneboxing, and this answers what it is What is a onebox? :star_struck: be sure to check it out.

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Wow, that’s certainly a great feature! But sorry, I wasn’t clear, what I think we need is to extend the citation’s internal linking (which you demonstrated) to full URL linking. If it’s too tricky to use the phpBB/BBCode & WordPress/HTML syntax, perhaps something similar to the way internal linking is done eg:

[quote="TEU, url:example.com"]
On phpBB forums
[/quote]

Sorry I am unclear what you are asking?

Offsite quotes to be expressed in BBCode.

Which you would do like this:

It’s been a while, but Florida did a smart thing.

original source

Or like this:

But I guess he wants some extra quote metadata.

I think there are plenty of other ways of achieving this for now.

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Discourse allows us to clearly show the author of a quote at the top quote block/box using [quote="Author"]Foo bar[/quote] to produce:

That’s extended to allow an internal link to where the author made the quote, again it’s neatly at the top quote block/box. i.e. [quote="Author, post:1, topic:82572"]Foo bar[/quote]

However, I’m encouraging us to consider extending this slightly further, to allow a URL to where the author made the quote, again keeping it neatly at the top quote block/box.

Websites have this functionality using the <cite><a href="http://example.com">Another Site</a></cite> HTML within a <blockquote> and BBCode forums usually achieve it using:
[quote="Author on [url=http://example.com/]Another Site[/url]"]

Discourse could use the HTML or BBCode syntax too, or they could use something more like [quote="Author, post:1, topic:82572"]Foo bar[/quote]

For example, [quote="Author, url:example.com"]Foo bar[/quote] that would render just like [quote="Author, post:1, topic:82572"]Foo bar[/quote] except the word “Author” would take you to example.com rather than post:1, topic:82572

While oneboxing is great it doesn’t seem to give any control over what bit is quoted—although I might be mistaken about that?

Thanks for taking the time to read this, am I making more sense?

You can already do

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I don’t think that’s being treated a title/citation in the way [quote="Author, post:1, topic:82572"] formats/converts “Author” into a link and adds the “expand/collapse” & “go to” buttons on the left, but it looks better than having the link outside the quote box/block :slight_smile:

Indeed. That’s just a workaround.

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Found more support for the idea:

http://html5doctor.com/cite-and-blockquote-reloaded/

I guess another workaround could be:

Although it would be far better for users & SEO if that was a clickable link.